6 states have fewer than a million people; Delaware is one of them. Biden has never been elected to anything-- unless you want to pretend he was elected VP-- outside of Delaware, a state with a pronounced penchant for electing very conservative Democrats. He has often tried to make it seem that he was a favorite son of Pennsylvania, the 6th most populous state in the union but he's never run for anything there. With 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is an important prize. Trump managed to win it in 2016-- 2,970,733 (48.18%) to 2,926,441 (47.46%) in a stunning and consequential upset. This year Trump is likely to lose the state-- and badly. Last week's Fox News poll shows Biden ahead 50-39%. It isn't so much that Biden is ahead-- few voters are enthused about Biden as president-- as much as Trump being behind. Voters are very enthused about kicking Trump out of office. At "best" voters are hoping for a 3rd Obama term.Writing for Newsweek yesterday, Chantal Da Silva reported that most people in Pennsylvania who have decided to vote for Biden are actually voting against Trump, not actually for Biden... and that's a state he claims a solid connection to. A new poll from Franklin & Marshall College "found that 55 percent of Biden backers were motivated to vote for the former vice president so they could see Trump unseated, rather than out of an eagerness to see Biden himself in power. Among those who said they would be voting for Trump, the overwhelming majority expressed the opposing sentiment, saying they were backing their candidate out of support for the president himself, rather than as a vote against Biden." This poll shows losing with 41% to Biden's 50%.In theory, it isn't too late for Biden to turn that around-- and many idealists with their heads in the clouds hope he will. He won't. Biden is who Biden is and he's not about to change that-- especially with all polls showing him headed for a landslide win, even if it's really a landslide loss for Trump. In an OpEd for the San Jose Mercury News Wednesday, Bernie delegate Norman Solomon wrote that 4 years ago overconfidence and thinly veiled hostility toward the left by the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, "glossed over and shrugged off the disaffection among Sanders supporters, especially young voters. Instead of selecting a vice-presidential candidate who might attract progressives, Clinton chose a pillar of the Democratic establishment, Sen. Tim Kaine. Today, many 'Berners' are frustrated and angry. It’s not only that hopes for a Sanders nomination and presidency were abruptly dashed. More corrosive and significant is a common feeling that, despite his recent nods leftward, Biden remains largely oblivious to social imperatives-- most notably, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Medicare for All."Nothing would make me vote for Biden, but I suspect, millions Democratic voters would feel a lot more enthusiastic about voting for him if he embraced Medicare-for-All. He won't; in fact, he said he would veto it if it passes Congress, which it won't anyway, Schumer having set up the most conservative Democratic Senate imaginable for 2021.
Virtually every exit poll of Democratic primary voters this year reflected strong majority support for Medicare for All, often by lopsided margins, even in conservative states. National polling has continued to show that two-thirds of all registered voters want Medicare for All.While Biden is now calling for a “public option” that would be an improvement on the 10-year-old Affordable Care Act, he hasn’t budged from his opposition to making Medicare universal-- at a time when tying medical coverage to jobs has been exposed as a grim travesty. A new study says that 5.4 million American workers lost their health insurance due to losing their jobs between February and May.While touting his “Build Back Better” program, Biden declared in a July 9 speech: “Let’s finish the job of Obamacare by ensuring everyone has access to quality, affordable health care.” By clinging to timeworn and evasive buzzwords like “access” and “affordable,” Biden affirmed his alignment with the multi-trillion-dollar health care industry more than with Americans who want health care to be treated as a human right in reality instead of in mere rhetoric.Just as Biden’s chances of winning the presidency would improve if he embraced Medicare for All, his prospects would also be enhanced by adopting popular positions that are especially important to racial minorities. For instance, he could do the right thing by finally supporting the legalization of marijuana, which would be a major step toward ending racist law-enforcement practices.Young African-Americans share with other young people a distinct lack of enthusiasm-- and a likelihood of low turnout-- for Biden. A similar problem exists with Latino voters, who heavily backed Sanders in the 2020 primaries and caucuses.
Solomon cites polling showing that 12% of Bernie voters having decided, like me, to forgo casting a ballot for the lesser evil and he thinks they will-- unlike me-- vote for Biden if Biden adopts progressive policies. Biden never will. He's aggressively anti-progressive and always has been and always will be. Wednesday John Nichols reported how 700 delegates to the convention say they will oppose the party platform unless it includes Medicare for All. It won't-- and does their threat matter at all? The Democratic conservative establishment has captured the party. Get used to fighting it. The platform will reflect Biden's conservatism on every single issue-- from healthcare, a Green New Deal, Israel and a jobs guarantee to marijuana legalization and ending qualified police immunity. Biden is on the Republican side of every issue. Yesterday, after I tweeted a list of Republican senators who should be asked if they support Trump's call to postpone the election-- Susan Collins, Steve Daines, Cory Gardner, Dan Sullivan, Martha McSally, Miss McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, David Perdue-- @VastLeft responded that he thought for a second that it was Biden's Supreme Court nominee list.Nichols wrote that "it is hard sell to claim that this is the boldest Democratic platform in American history. The 1900 Democratic platform began by 'warn[ing] the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.' That was bold. The 1932 Democratic platform announced, in the midst of the Great Depression, that the party was committed to 'stamping out monopolistic practices and the concentration of economic power.' That was bold. The 1944 Democratic platform asserted, in a time of Jim Crow segregation when the party relied on the 'solid South' as a part of its coalition, that 'racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution.' And it argued that 'Congress should exert its full constitutional powers to protect those rights.' That was bold. The 1960 Democratic platform declared, at a point when new technologies were transforming workplaces, that 'we will provide the government leadership necessary to insure that the blessings of automation do not become burdens of widespread unemployment.' That was bold. The 1972 Democratic platform promised 'to rethink and reorder the institutions of this country' to address systemic racism and sexism and classism-- and it outlined a plan to 'restructure the social, political and economic relationships throughout the entire society in order to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and power.' That was bold. So, too, was the document’s recognition that a for-profit health care system was failing the United States-- and its commitment to 'establish a system of universal National Health Insurance which covers all Americans with a comprehensive set of benefits including preventive medicine, mental and emotional disorders, and complete protection against catastrophic costs, and in which the rule of free choice for both provider and consumer is protected. The program should be federally-financed and federally-administered.'"
From the 1940s through 1980, on health care issues, Democratic platforms took bolder stands than does the party’s 2020 draft platform. “Progressive ideas are nothing new,” notes Representative Ro Khanna, a cochair of the California delegation to this year’s convention, who argues that “there’s no reason we can’t finish enacting those policies today.”Unfortunately, the platform committee does not propose to do so.A Medicare for All amendment advanced by supporters of the 2020 presidential bid of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was rejected overwhelmingly on Monday, garnering just 36 “yes,” versus 125 “no,” votes from a committee dominated by Biden backers. Proposals to lower the Medicare eligibility age and expand access for children were also rejected.The party’s refusal to support Medicare for All is wrongheaded practically, as Michael Lighty noted Monday when he urged platform committee members to join civil rights groups in supporting Medicare for All. “It’s vital that we meet this moment that demands health justice and Medicare For All to create a system to address the health inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic when Blacks and Latinos are dying at rates two-, two-and-a-half-times that of whites,” said the veteran single-payer activist.The party’s refusal to support a single-payer system is also wrongheaded politically, as the campaigns of Sanders and a rising generation of Democratic members of Congress have popularized the Medicare for All agenda to such an extent that recent polling finds it is supported by 69 percent of all Americans and 88 percent of Democrats.“The Democrats are making a fatal mistake by turning their backs on Medicare for All,” argues Winnie Wong, a former senior political adviser to the Sanders campaign, more bluntly. She labeled the committee votes “shameful” at a time “when the country is in the death grip of a global pandemic and people are dying” because they can’t afford health care.
This is Obama's party. He's calling the shots. He was in office for 8 years and I never heard any serious talk about Medicare-for-All, did you?. His wing of the party doesn't want it and it's not going to happen. Nothing in the progressive agenda will. That was decided on Super Tuesday. Do you know what a general strike is? Fighting about a platform isn't going to get anyone anything.And most of all, at John Lewis' funeral, Bill Clinton-- the most corporate Democrat of our lifetimes-- wants to thank Jim Clyburn-- more than Obama or Bush or Pelosi... Why? For killing the peoples' campaign behind Bernie, that's why. It's less than a minute, just listen... and watch the ugly smirk from this serial rapist pig.